WRL media coursework, AMNESTY

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WRL media coursework

      In June 2007 amnesty international, an organisation who have traditionally partnered the Catholic Church, changed there policy on abortion after there research in Dafur. They looked into rape and how in many countries it is being used as a weapon of war and once a tribe has defeated another tribe the women of the area would be raped as a signal of victory. After these findings amnesty who previously neutral on abortion has stated that it supports abortion in certain circumstances such as rape, incest and as a weapon of war. Over the years both the Catholic Church and amnesty have worked together on freeing political prisoners and highlighting human rights. However since amnesty changed its policy on abortion against there’s they have advised all Catholics to quit there membership to amnesty.

         In my coursework I’ll be looking at two articles on there views on the preceding and be comparing and contrasting between them. The first article is from the guardian, a paper which is well known for its liberal thinking and belief of free will. It believes the Catholic Church is wrong for banning amnesty and both starts and finishes ridiculing the Catholic’s view as “nonsensical.” They also mention how out of the ¼ million catholic members of amnesty only 222 quit and how most of these where from the clergy who may of lost there jobs if they had refused. It also mocks the catholic mentioning how “105 Catholics have even increased there donations”. To show what side the guardian is really on it talks about how 2000 Catholic schools will suffer from not being able to use amnesty’s teachings. The final part of the article talks about amnesties policies and talks about there research in Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, overall the guardian makes a very convincing argument which undermines the Catholic’s view.

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         Meanwhile the Telegraph is a much more traditional paper and believes in the Catholic Church, however does not rebuff amnesty too much. The telegraph relies on statistics to present a case and uses numbers such as “2000 secondary schools” and “5000 Catholic parishes” and if the telegraph were to present a case where the numbers aren’t available they would probably struggle. The article contradicts the guardian by claiming the number of Catholic’s leaving Amnesty as “exodus”. However unlike the guardian admits how the splitting has made a lot of Catholic’s look at there faith. The article ...

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